Why are we in Syria? To fight Iran

With all the sh*thole kerfuffle, it was easy to not notice a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting going on yesterday.
During that meeting something very ominous was said.

David Satterfield, acting assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, was responding to a question from Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) about what function U.S. troops serve in Syria besides fighting ISIS, as Satterfield and other U.S. officials have indicated the military will be staying the country past the terrorist group’s defeat.

Satterfield first declined to answer at all, saying he would prefer to do so in a classified setting.

But committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) interjected to say “that won’t pass muster,” demanding Satterfield provide at least a general answer.

Satterfield then offered: “We are deeply concerned with the activities of Iran, with the ability of Iran to enhance those activities through a greater ability to move materiel into Syria. And I would rather leave the discussion at that point.”

The Pentagon did not send a witness to Thursday’s hearing, despite committee requests.

Senators in both parties expressed concern about both Satterfield’s suggestion and the Pentagon’s failure to send a witness.

WTF does that mean!?!
It seems to mean exactly what it sounds like.

After Satterfield’s answer to Murphy, committee ranking member Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) interjected to say that such a role for the U.S. military has not been authorized by Congress.

“It’s hard to understand your response with even the most broad use of an (authorization for the use of military force) covering anything close to what you’re saying,” Cardin said.

Added Murphy: “I would share those concerns to the extent that your answer suggests that the future role of the U.S. military in Syria will be aimed at addressing Iranian and Iranian-backed military presence.”

Since the Pentagon didn't even bother to send a witness, they seem to be implying that the opinion of Congress doesn't matter.
And they are right to feel that way. Congress surrendered it's Constitutional duties long ago. They are only a dog and pony show now.

If you are still unconvinced that the Pentagon intends a military confrontation against Iran in Syria, consider this report from last week.

The US has given Israel the green light to assassinate General Qassem Soleimani, commander of an elite Iranian military unit and mastermind behind Tehran's military operations across the Middle East, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Monday.
Al-Jarida quoted an unnamed source in Jerusalem who said that the two allies have made a quiet agreement after deciding that Soleimani is a “threat to the two countries’ interests in the region".

All the dominoes are lining up. Our MIC and Trump intends war with Iran.

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“You are operating under a flawed premise,” Murphy told Satterfield, “which is that there is any future for Syria that does not involve a substantial role for Iran.”
“It worries me that you are telling the committee that our military presence in Syria will continue as long as Iran’s does,” the senator continued.

from last month

The Trump administration is considering “whether to make confronting Iran an explicit new goal for the more than 2,000 American forces currently in Syria,” according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal. If a policy of military confrontation with Iran in Syria is actually on the table, this is troubling on several levels.
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WoodsDweller's picture

Because if you don't spend all your budget, you can't ask for a bigger budget next year.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

@WoodsDweller they intend to start a war we can't win

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@gjohnsit
Not only do the people hold no sway over their elected representatives in Congress, but Congress does not, will not and can not control our military. Any pretense of the presence of a functional democratic republic in the United States is now a gossamer thin illusion.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

divineorder's picture

@ovals49

...

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

@divineorder and reactions by Congress. Also says DOD was no show because gave priority to reporting to another congressional committee.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@divineorder

Nothing like the US PTB at this point in the progression of attempted world conquest occupying one sovereign country and trying to 'bend another sovereign country to their will' in order to attack another sovereign country to make much of the rest of the world finally get together on regime change to quell the incremental universally fatal global threat which the US PTB and their cabal so clearly pose, via international enforcement of international law, in independent international court, at long last.

Hey, I can dream, right? It did work last time - except for various Nazi's being smuggled out of confinement over war crimes/the Holocaust as the initially domestic start of an extermination program to be taken global, into industry and government, pathological culture and all. It appears probable that we're watching a more carefully planned version of this previous attempt at global conquest; fascism never was a 'German (or whatever country) thing', it's a psychopath thing. And they've given themselves away too far thoroughly for it not to be obvious to anyone even moderately aware.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

divineorder's picture

...

https://www.rt.com/usa/412038-pentagon-syria-staying-isis/

“Pentagon to keep forces in Syria ‘as long as we need’ – spokesman
Published time: 5 Dec, 2017 20:58
Edited time: 6 Dec, 2017 07:34

...
Iran justification may be a cover for rush to steal Syrian oil.... https://www.rt.com/usa/415649-senate-syria-hearing-russia-iran/

The State Department official sought to downplay Turkish fears of the US working with the Syrian Kurds, saying the political structures being established in the US-controlled part of Syria are “multiethnic, not Kurdish in an ethnonationalist sense.” The Kurds and Arabs gathered around the SDF are “a big swath of population, of assets - both hydrocarbon and agricultural - and they need to be part of a future of Syria,” Satterfield said.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@divineorder

Is unwanted military trespass by the military of one country squatting uninvited in another sovereign legal under international law? How about an invasion and occupation by the hostile forces of one country into another which poses no threat to them?

How many times can TPTB keep getting away with this transparent excuse of fighting 'terrorists' they often either directly or indirectly create, while both directly and indirectly massively killing, sickening, maiming, kidnapping, torturing and dispossessing citizens around the world through both military and industrial means, before self-preservation begins to kick in among international bodies and the countries forming them?

The world and the concept of democracy also cannot survive any country or group or any self-interests running ruining the world and controlling citizens and policy through micromanagement of our lives and choices, even if more gently than now, yet it's being set into a power-struggle among the interests running different countries or groups by those attempting Total Global Control and by those reacting to this to band together against this, as they now must.

TPTB're pushing for MAD and global destruction of planetary life in the near future by that and/or multiple other 'profitable' means and people like us can't pretend to hope to vote out the unelected among those destructive self-interests running/infiltrating our governments, or possibly even their cheated-in selections among which we get some pretense of 'choice'; same as last time, this is going to take the world unifying for just and public-protective law and order to become - this time, please FSM! - equally applied, and applied to those destructive forces buying/brutalizing themselves a space 'above the law' which should never exist.

How much longer will we have access to non-'State'(self-interest/privately)-controlled news and discussion?

How much longer will we - even pacific old farts like some of us here - be able to even speak out on the internet or anywhere at all, as the last remaining pretenses of civilization are shredded away, along with Disposables like us?

We have two very sweet (they do tease each other a bit, lol) little girls staying here this weekend; I'd like to think that they'll have a future to be free and happy with and in, or at least a future. That we all will. Everywhere.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

divineorder's picture

@Ellen North @Ellen North

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.